Will the BBMC ever see the light of day?

The ambitious Benazir Bhutto Medical College (BBMC) project, the construction of which began in December last year, is still waiting to be recognised by the Pakistan Medical Dental Council (PMDC), a senior official told The News on the condition of anonymity.As such, faculty and other staff members cannot be hired without accreditation from the PMDC. The official said that nothing was done even after the Sindh chief secretary was alerted to this fact, and there are fears about the project being shelved.Sindh Chief Secretary Fazal Ur Rehman, however, refuted all claims regarding the project being shelved. He said that the recruitment of faculty and staff members had begun; the project was complete; and will be inaugurated on January 27 by President Asif Ali Zardari.Rehman added that the inauguration had been postponed due to some prior commitments of the president, and that, all issues will be dealt after the college is inaugurated.“One wonders how applicants are being recruited without a selection board to test and interview them,” Sher Mohammed Raees, an active member of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), said. “The registration of students, appointment of the faculty and most importantly, a selection board, are some of the vital things that need to be thought about before the college is inaugurated, not after.”Apparently, classes at the medical college were supposed to begin in the first week of January, Lyari Town Nazim Mahmood Hashim said. At present, however, the location of the medical college is the main hurdle. “The building where the medical college is being started was previously the Ayaz Sammo Nursing School. The structure is small, and not suitable for a medical college, because the latter needs laboratories and space for equipment,” he said.Apart from this, the old building has warehouses whose tenants refuse to leave. “Some of them have a lease till 2036 and therefore cannot be asked to leave the place. Some leases, however, expired as far back as 1995; these warehouses are being used illegally,” he said.The PPP government announced a Rs930 million development project for Lyari earlier in 2009, under which the BBMC and a cardiac ward at the Lyari General Hospital were to be established and later inaugurated by President Asif Ali Zardari. Since its inception, however, the medical college has been facing one problem after another. To start with, the date of the inauguration has been changed thrice, adding to the worries of the administration involved with the project. Linked to the starting of the project is the law-and-order situation in Lyari which keeps hampering the construction process, “which is proceeding on a snail’s pace anyways,” Raees said.Moreover, with Sindh Health Secretary Hashim Raza Zaidi removed from his post in a continuous reshuffling in the government, Raees hopes that the construction and development of Lyari tops the priority list of the newly-designated secretary.